


nutmeg and ginger and cinnamon and cloves

by icygrace



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Bash POV, F/M, Kenna POV, Season 2 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-10 16:35:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6996016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icygrace/pseuds/icygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“My heart really isn't that complicated.” Except that it is, and Bash and Kenna see inside it with help from an unexpected source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to GRRM for applying one of his lines to a Reign character. Title from Bash’s statement about the contents of Kenna’s heart. Most of the flashback quotes come from episodes of the show, but the story diverges from the canon after a certain point. Scenes are not all in chronological order. This is AU as of part of the way through season 2, although it includes an alternate scenario for something that does not occur until 3x15.

_C’est bien fait pour lui qu’elle lui fait les cornes!_ Lady Barnard sounds spitefully delighted at the misfortune of whichever poor idiot she’s tittering over. “He thinks he’s better than the rest of us when really he’s just a presumptuous bastard with a whore for a wife.” Lady Barnard’s speaking of –

 

 _How dare she!_ He’s about to drag her out of her darkened corner and make her answer for her insult to his wife when he recalls what had her laughing.

 

_It serves him right to have her put the horns on him!_

 

She can’t be speaking of him. Of Kenna. _She can’t._

 

“Well, he knew it when they married, didn’t he?”

 

“He _ought_ to have known what he was getting into, marrying his father’s mistress, for God’s sake.”

 

_No._

 

The other woman huffs disbelievingly. “She’s something, though. First King Henry and now the King of Navarre.”

 

Antoine. Antoine, whose gallantries had pleased her, who is wealthy and powerful and _royal_ even if only through marriage.

 

“The only reason she didn’t try it on with Francis is probably because he’s so inexplicably devoted to his bastard brother. He wouldn’t have had it.”

 

“I rather think she didn’t try it because she’s more loyal to her queen than to her husband.”

 

The other woman snickers. “Well, there is something rather Sapphic about the queen’s ladies, don’t you think?”

 

“That would be delicious – two kings and a queen as well!” Lady Barnard titters again. “And her poor fool husband believes those doe eyes she bats at him whenever he returns to court.”

 

“You can’t really blame her. Bastard or no, I won’t deny he’s a handsome man, but he leaves so frequently.”

 

_And you leave me alone for days at a time. You don't say where you're going._

_Come here, wife._

_Oh, and you're off again._

_Yes. Yes, I am._

 

“It’d be so easy to have your head turned, particularly when the man paying you court is a king.”

Lady Barnard makes an appreciative noise. “It would be rather lovely to be courted by a king, especially one so . . . _virile_ as King Antoine.”

 

“But do you know? Upstart her husband may be, but he does genuinely seem to feel something for her. I almost feel sorry for him.”

 

_I love you. There's just something that I need to look into._

 

\---

 

“Wife.” His voice completely lacks the usual warmth he lends to that word. It matches the ice in his eyes.

 

She narrows her eyes in return; she has no idea what’s going on. While things have been strained between them, what with her learning the truth of his relationship with his sister and his unjustified jealousy of the King of Navarre, she knows no reason he should speak to her thus. “Husband.”

 

“You’ve been well since I left?”

 

 _Not in the least._ He’d left without a word to her after Antoine’s party. “Well enough.”

 

“One would think trading up from a king’s bastard to a king would merit better than a _well enough_.”

 

She freezes. “Excuse me?”

 

“I know what you’ve been about.”

 

“It’s –” How could he? Is he angry? “I –”

 

“I suppose Antoine must try harder; I was always eager to please. But perhaps there’s just no satisfying you.”

 

“Bash! What in God’s–”

 

“Just admit that you’ve a taste for kings, that you’d rather be a king’s mistress than my wife!”

 

“With the way you treat me, you make me ask myself every day why I love you!”

 

“Do you?”

 

“Well, when you act like this –!”

 

“Admit it!”

 

“At least I haven’t a taste for siblings!” she snarls instead.

 

“At least Claude is honest about what she is.”

 

“She lied about Henry –”

 

“I should have known what _you_ were when he forced me to –”

 

“Go to hell!”

 

“I’m already living one of Henry’s making,” he snarls back. 

 

\---

 

Bash stalks off to the commander’s quarters in the south keep after his reunion with his appallingly deceitful wife.

 

To think Kenna could pretend such innocence to his face when she’s been acting as she has. It pains him more than he cares to admit.

 

Lady Barnard’s poison he could have overlooked as falsehoods from someone with reason to slander his wife, but when added to more reasoned testimony from Leith, who clearly wanted to absolve Kenna of her sins . . .

 

\---

 

“So you’ve been looking after things in my absence.”

 

“I have,” Leith says questioningly.

 

“I thank you. And I have some questions for you.”

 

“I will answer them gladly.” But he says it nervously.

 

“I want to start with my wife’s dealings with the King of Navarre.”

 

Leith pales and he needs ask no further answer.

 

But he must – masochistically, he must know _everything_. “Whatever she’s done, I will not vent my rage on you for the telling. I’d rather know from a friend than continue to have half the court laughing behind my back without knowing why.”

 

“I –”

 

“Get on with it!”

 

“My apologies. I – I’ll be brief. I’d rather not drag this on. At first Antoine – I’ll dispense with ‘the king’ because then you wouldn’t know if I was speaking of Francis or – anyway, Antoine was just very . . . attentive to Lady Kenna. Not surprising. She is, after all, a very beautiful and charming woman.”

 

“And her reputation precedes her,” Bash adds coolly.

 

Leith clearly doesn’t dare agree. “But then she began to get gifts. They seemed rather expensive. The servants said they were –” Leith clears his throat uncomfortably. “From Antoine, though Lady Kenna told Greer that she’d done nothing to get his attention. And that is all I’ve heard of the matter.”

 

“And these . . . gifts, they’re the only thing known at court?” It’s not so terrible, if Antoine’s merely giving her gifts. It’s inappropriate and he’d still want to rip the man in half, but –

 

“She dines with him, now.” Leith hesitates. “Every night that there’s not a feast. There are . . .” Leith trails off and looks down.

 

“Get on with it.”

 

“There are rumors that she’s spent the night in his chambers.”

 

He slams a fist against the stone wall in front of him before he even has a chance to consider it.

 

Leith winces.

 

He forces himself to breathe through the pain he’s inflicted on his hand. “So you questioned the servants?”

 

“On Francis’s orders. He’s quite wrapped up in the affairs of state, so it took a long while, but he did think Antoine’s attentions to your wife were rather too much when he took notice of them. He asked me to look into it. But that’s all that I learned.”

 

Bash scoffs. “If Antoine’s willing to drape my wife in jewels and silks and God knows what else, he’d certainly bribe some servants to lie about what they do behind closed doors.”

 

Once he does his own digging, he discovers the truth is far worse than he could’ve dreamed.


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kenna nearly jumps out of her skin at Catherine’s silky, too-innocent words.

“Antoine seems to be quite taken with you.”

 

Kenna nearly jumps out of her skin at Catherine’s silky, too-innocent words. How is it that Catherine entered without being announced by a servant? She’ll have to talk to them. She’d specifically demanded to be left alone for the day; given her mood after Antoine’s party, over Bash’s sullen departure, she didn’t consider herself fit for company. “Lonely for his wife, most likely,” she manages. “He seemed quite at a loss planning a party without her.”

 

Catherine scoffs, helping herself to the most comfortable seat in the room uninvited. “It’s common knowledge that they are estranged.”

 

“I’ve done nothing wrong.” She feels a child scolded by her nanny, who’d lie in wait until she cracked from the guilt. She even settles huffily into the chair next to Catherine’s like she might have done in those days.

 

“I didn’t say you have.”

 

Not out loud, at any rate. “I am not the girl I used to be. I am a good wife. A loyal wife. A _faithful_ wife.”

 

“Your husband seems to think otherwise.”

 

Kenna clenches her fists in her skirts. “He is wrong. But why do you care? Do you take his part? Or at you here merely to vex me, because abusing me amuses you? I do recall what you said when you were imprisoned.”

 

“Your husband has been helpful to me since Claude’s return to court and a Medici always pays her debts.”

 

Kenna tries not to scoff at the mention of Claude, both because of what she was to Bash and what Catherine tried to do to her. “Oh do tell.”

 

“You don’t know?”

 

She _never_ knows. Bash keeps all manner of secrets from her.

 

“Well then.” Catherine pauses and smooths her gown, looking far away as she begins to speak. “I had twin daughters who died as infants.”

 

“I remember.”

 

“Claude was a young child at the time and upset that the babies took up all of my attention. When the they were examined after death, the physician found rosettes in their throats – rosettes from a dress of Claude’s. They had torn some off the dress and she’d been furious. So I believed she had put them there, killing them –”

 

“And that’s why you poisoned her?”

 

“I believed I was sparing her worse.”

 

“What could be worse than death?”

 

“A painful death is worse than a painless death, no?”

 

“I suppose. But –”

 

“I believed the twins were appearing to me, requiring justice, and would kill Claude and do it slowly and painfully if I didn’t heed them and do it myself.”

 

Is Catherine _mad_? And why is she admitting such things to –

 

“I was being driven mad – like Henry. It turns out he was poisoned by his Bible and I began using that same Bible after he died.”

 

“And how did Bash help? Figuring out that you were being poisoned?” she asks impatiently, not wanting to discuss Henry or Henry’s death with Catherine.

 

“It was Narcisse who realized what was ailing me. Sebastian investigated the twins’ death and cleared Claude’s name. It turns out their nanny stuffed the rosettes down their throats to hide the fact that –” Catherine clears her throat and, for a half-moment, seems to stumble over her words. Perhaps she is becoming emotional. “To hide that her negligence – she’d left her charges alone to sleep with their father –”

 

Kenna resists the urge to roll her eyes. Of course Henry would sleep with his children’s nanny.

 

“– Had already killed them. I concocted a story about a fever to hide what I believed was the truth about Claude’s actions, Henry married the nanny off, and all these years I believed my own daughter to be a killer.”

 

How awful. “That is terrible. I am sorry.”

 

Catherine is business-like again. “Because your husband has helped us put that matter to bed at last, I will help you in turn. Don’t be fooled by Antoine. Or his gifts or –”

 

“It’s not about gowns or jewels or money.”

 

“He doesn’t have much of it; he’s a spendthrift and his wife won’t allow him another penny. But if none of that –”

 

“I wouldn’t even consider turning to another man for just material comfort.”

 

Catherine tilts her head, in an obvious _do go on_ sort of gesture.

 

Perhaps it is Greer’s absence, Lola’s preoccupation, Mary’s distance, or the long-ago loss of her own mother, but she finds herself confiding in Catherine. “Lately, the other sorts of comforts are more lacking in my marriage, the kinds that began to matter to me more after . . .” She trails off. _Henry’s ill-treatment._ “Some of my experiences here at court.”

 

“What sorts of comforts?” But Catherine has a knowing glint in her eye.

 

“Respect. Trust. Honesty. Attention and attentiveness. Companionship. Something to do other than sit around waiting for my husband to return to me.”

 

“Ah.” Catherine grimaces slightly. “Matters of the heart, to a degree. Then I will tell you this: even if Antoine does not simply mean to use you for his own ends, he may not give you what you seek any more than Sebastian does – and it might not satisfy you even if he did.”

 

 _Because I love Bash._ “He offers me marriage.”

 

“He is married, as are you.”

 

“I married under duress. I could seek an annulment.”

 

“Oh Henry, you fool.” Catherine shakes her head. “But what of Antoine’s marriage?”

 

“His wife is dying.”

 

Catherine’s eyes narrow. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

 

“I’m surprised you don’t have spies at the Navarrese court to tell you either way.” Perhaps Catherine will know, but Catherine clearly has an agenda, so she won’t necessarily take her at her word.

 

“Who is to say I don’t?” Catherine gives her an inscrutable look. “Hmm.”

 

“But it’s Bash you feel you owe your help to.”

 

“If you will leave him someday, why drag it out? My debt will be paid by running off his faithless wife while he is still young enough to forget all about her and remarry.”

 

“But in a way that could make me a queen –” _Is that true?_

She does know the crown is Queen Jeanne’s by birth. So it should go to their children after her if they have them, as Francis’s crown would go to his and Mary’s children, shouldn’t it? Does Antoine mean that he would be regent and as his wife, she would be a queen of sorts in his child’s minority? But perhaps like Francis and Mary, Antoine and his wife don’t have children. Wouldn’t she have heard if they did?

 

She wondered about it all after indulging brief fantasies of being a queen.

 

“Ah yes. The Navarrese were so foolish, agreeing to grant him a crown matrimonial.”

 

“And they’ve no children?”

 

“They do, but they will not inherit until after Antoine’s death. That is the nature of the crown matrimonial, Kenna.”

 

“So why would you tell me all this, help me? You don’t like me.”

 

“It’s true. You _were_ my husband’s mistress. But you are no Diane. You were a naïve child, really. And in a way, you remind me of myself.”

 

She feels her brows fly up at that. “How?”

 

“You want more, more than others believe you can or ought to have, and you feel no need to apologize for your ambition.”

 

Until Bash made her feel the worst sort of woman for being ambitious.

 

“And in the unlikely event Antoine’s offer is a genuine one –”

 

She wonders herself. _I know what a man like Antoine wants. I'm not a fool. But I can handle him._ “I don’t believe that it is,” Kenna admits. “Bash killed his brother on Henry’s orders.”

 

Catherine nods, unfazed.

 

“He wants revenge.”

 

“Naturally.”

 

“He seems to think taking me from him is the best way of getting it, but I frankly doubt Bash cares enough –”

 

“Foolish girl,” Catherine scolds, but it has no bite. “Anyone with eyes could see how angry your husband was at that party.”

 

“His pride was piqued.”

 

“Of course it was, as was his heart along with it. But does that make a difference?”

 

“Of course it does!” But then she remembers everything else.

 

\---

 

_I believed you when you said you wanted us to have a life together, but this is our future: you breaking your word and abandoning me to an empty home so you can run off and be the hero._

_And you leave me alone for days at a time. You don't say where you're going._

_Where have you been? I've been waiting and waiting._

_Did you even try? Or were you happier being away from me right now?_

_So strange, isn't it? Both of us married and yet more alone than ever._

 

_Here we are again. You have to run off and save the world. How many more battles for you and lonely nights for me until it's all done?_

\---

“And yet . . . Bash lies to me –” (slept with his half-sister) “– and keeps secrets from me –” (the story Catherine’s just told her about Claude and surely others she doesn’t wish to tell or doesn’t know about, about the sorts of titles Francis had offered, and God knows how many secrets of Francis’s Bash keeps) “– and abandons me and yet I’m the one deserving of anger, the one not to be trusted!”

 

She had meant to stay calm, not to let Catherine get a rise out of her, not to raise her voice. Catherine is, after all, the queen mother. And she’d been doing so well.

 

“And you think Antoine wouldn’t lie to you or keep secrets from you or abandon you?”

 

“Of course not.” Even Francis, who means well, has lied to Mary and kept secrets from her. And Antoine’s wife may not want him with her – assuming she is truly dying – but he at least ought to _try_ to make amends, not be making overtures in search of a second wife while the first is on her deathbed.

 

“But you would be more willing to accept such treatment from him than from Sebastian? Because he is a king?”

 

“Yes. No.” _Because I could find some consolation in being a queen. I wouldn’t have so much time to think on it. It –_

 

She doesn’t love Antoine. Of course she doesn’t. She barely knows him.

 

And he at least has enough respect for her intelligence not to pretend he loves her either. He only speaks of wanting her.

 

And she? While discomfited by his attentions and aware of his motivations, she is also flattered and grateful for the distraction he provides.

 

Because the man she does love breaks her heart every day. Not enough to shatter it, mind, but enough for it to ache constantly and she is not sure how much longer she can bear the pain.

_I saw you happy yesterday. And . . . if you are less than happy in your every day, I wonder if you might entertain a way out. A life with me. A chance to be a queen._

 

She’s entertained it and she wouldn’t choose it if she could have what she truly wanted. _I want a good life, and a husband to share it with._

No, not just any husband – Bash. But it seems that what she truly wants is out of her grasp. So does she want a half-life with the man she loves or a fuller life with one she doesn’t?

 

She doesn’t know. “It would hurt less,” she finds herself admitting.

 

For once, Catherine mercifully has no rejoinder. Instead, she calls for a servant.

 

After she’s gulped down a goblet of wine (only after waiting for Catherine to drink first), while Catherine slowly sips at her own, she feels a bit better, if less steady.

 

“I could offer you something to do other than wait for your husband to return to you.”

 

“I’m not joining your Flying Squad.” _I’m married, if not particularly happily right now._

 

“Of course not,” Catherine scoffs. “You are the king’s sister-in-law. It would reflect poorly on Francis.” She stops a moment. “How do you even _know_ about my Flying Squad?”

 

She says nothing. A woman must have some secrets, after all.

 

“Oh, never mind, the sex journal, of course.”

 

She feels like she might burst with her knowledge of it. “I’ve learned the identity of the lover who towers above the others, by the way.”

 

“How?”

 

“I saw the scar.”

 

“On whom?”

 

“Lord Narcisse.”

 

“How . . . interesting.”

 

Then she recalls how much time Catherine has spent with Narcisse. Have they . . . If they haven’t, they surely will now that she’s revealed his identity to Catherine. Lovely, just the mental image she needed. “Just thought you might want to know. We were all so intrigued.”

 

“Speaking of intrigue, I am concerned that the Bourbons are plotting more than revenge against your husband. But perhaps we could use Antoine’s scheming against them.”

 

“How?”

 

“ _Seduce_ him _._ ”

 

“I told you I –”

 

“Not with your body. With words and coy looks and smiles. With secrets.”

 

“Secrets?”

 

“Tell him you need time to think. Let him think you trust him. Tell him enough to seem vulnerable, some of the things you’ve told me, to let him think he is succeeding in his revenge. That he is wearing you down, winning you away from Sebastian. Get him to trust you.”

 

“But –”

 

“Your husband? This would be a way of protecting him. You should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It’s why we haven’t banished Lord Narcisse, of course. Else how are you meant to know what they are plotting?”

 

She considers it. “But how long can I carry it on without him expecting more?”

 

“You managed to keep Henry dangling for some time, didn’t you? Antoine isn’t much different.”


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Congratulations.” The wild look in Bash’s eyes is sharply at odds with the impassivity of his face and the joviality of his tone.

“Congratulations.” The wild look in Bash’s eyes is sharply at odds with the impassivity of his face and the joviality of his tone.

 

Her eyes widen as she takes him in for first time since he, for all intents and purposes, accused her of being unfaithful to him.

 

“Bash, what is –”

 

He pours out a generous amount of wine for both of them, some of it sloshing onto the table, and holds one out to her, insistently, which she takes reluctantly. He lifts his goblet in a slightly slurred, mocking toast. “I should’ve known a barony would never be enough for the high and mighty Lady Kenna.”

 

“Are you dr –”

 

He interrupts. “Oh, beg your pardon, _Your Majesty_. Let’s toast your next marriage.”

 

“Bash! I’m not going to _have_ a next –” She would not choose Antoine over Bash, not least of all because she’s discovered what manner of man he really –

 

He slams down his goblet on the table and, this time, his wine does spill. “Do you take me for a fool? I’ve learned of your schemes and I’ve already taken care of the matter myself.”

 

“You –”

 

“Sent to Rome to secure the annulment of our marriage. It’s only a matter of time.”

 

“No. No,” she insists. “You did no such thing.”

 

“Oh, but I did, dear wife.”

 

“You’ve ruined everything!” she shrieks.

 

“Ruined?” He scoffs. “Things have worked out quite nicely for us all. Soon you’ll be Antoine’s to plague. And I’ll be glad to see the back of you.” He continues in that over-careful inflection typical of the utterly smashed. “After all, I wouldn’t want to keep a treacherous who –”

 

“Stop. Stop it before you say something I can’t –”

 

He finishes the slur defiantly, eyes emerald flames.

 

“Forgive,” she finishes in the smallest voice imaginable.

 

“I don’t want your forgiveness. I don’t need it. You’ll never have mine.”

 

She’s shaking so hard – from fear, from fury, from pain – that her own goblet slips from her fingers, spilling wine across the floor, a sea of red.

 

Blood red, like the shards of her broken heart.

 

\---

 

“I am sorry about Diane,” Kenna says softly as she enters their old chambers. It is strange and uncomfortable. But they were married until recently (she had not contested the annulment, although Catherine – _Catherine_ , of all people – told her it was her right), she tells herself, and she is still at court, in the rooms she once shared with her friends, so it is reasonable for her to give her condolences on his mother’s death.

 

“Are you?” he asks, eyes glinting. “You hated her,” he continues when she doesn’t answer, voice rising and as hateful as the feelings he accuses her of harboring toward Diane. “She was your rival. You would’ve seen us both dead for the sake of your –”

 

“Don’t lash out at me. Don’t you dare! I won’t put up with it anymore.”

 

“Ah, yes, because you’re not my wife anymore.”

 

“No. Because even if I still were, I had nothing to do with this. And because I am a lady and I deserve to be treated better.”

 

He scoffs. “A _lady_.”

 

She catches his wrist as he goes to pick up his goblet again. “You are grieving and clearly _drunk_ and that is the only reason I won’t do more than this –” She twists just a little until he groans in pain. “But if you do not keep a civil tongue in your head when you next speak to me, I will be far less lenient, _my lord_.” She nearly spits the words, enough venom in them to match his, before releasing him.

 

She realizes that while she doesn’t want the King of Navarre, she doesn’t want the man she called husband either.

 

\---

 

He throws himself into investigating his mother’s exceedingly suspicious death to avoid his guilt over sending her away and his painful feelings regarding Kenna. He keeps his distance and hides away when he is unable to leave on some deputy’s duty for Francis, but despite everything, despite himself, he loves her still. Neither work nor drowning himself in drink suffices to drive Kenna from his mind or his heart.

 

\---

 

For more reasons than one, he is relieved when he finally puts the pieces of his mother’s death together and confronts her killer. “You killed my mother.”

 

Catherine doesn’t bother to deny it. “She killed my daughters. Your sisters. Thanks to her, I thought Claude a killer and nearly killed _her_.”

 

The terrible thing is, angry as he is, he cannot fault Catherine. He would never have killed his mother for the wrong she did, but he did cut her out of his life for it. “You are a monster,” he says, though he is not sure he even believes it and knows that, if she is, he is one as well.

 

“No more than your beloved mother. But because you, at least, are better than her, I will tell you this: you are wrong about Kenna. You would do well to remedy your mistake.”

 

“This is rich, you kill my mother, one of your husband’s mistresses, and tell me to make up with my former wife, your husband’s other mistress.”

 

“I felt it very likely Antoine meant you – meant us all – harm. I asked her to help me. He wanted to gain her trust to seduce her and punish you, so I thought her best positioned to keep an eye on his plots. And do you know what she found, Sebastian?”

 

“I don’t care.”

 

“You should. It was Antoine who poisoned Henry, not the duc de Guise.”

 

“You lie.”

 

“No I don’t.”

 

“And yet you –”

 

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

 

“Catherine, you cannot –”

 

“She knows precisely what sort of man he is and has agreed to the match.”

 

“I don’t believe you. I will speak to her myself.”

 

Catherine shrugs.

 

\---

 

“Is it possible for me to earn your forgiveness? Before you go?”

 

Bash sounds weary and that angers her. He doesn’t get to be weary after what he’s put her through, and after he dares make this attempt the night before her departure to Navarre.

 

It seems that Antoine, although he started off fully intending to leave her twisting in the wind, has some affection for her.

 

But he could never and would never marry her. With Queen Jeanne dead, he will be marrying Claude to strengthen ties with France.

 

Catherine is clearly hedging her bets in light of Francis and Mary’s continued estrangement. Francis’s heirs are his brothers and they are still little boys. She suspects the marriage is also intended to prevent Antoine from allying himself with the English queen.

 

While she assumes neither Antoine nor Claude will be faithful to one another after the early headiness of marriage to someone whose voracious sexual appetites match their own has faded, Kenna has told the King of Navarre that she will be no man’s mistress.

 

_Last time I was, he went mad and married me off to his bastard son._

_Luckily for you, I have no bastard sons and, if I do someday, they will be far too young for you._

_Your Majesty!_

_I jest, lovely Kenna. But the court at Navarre will be rather more exciting, now that I will return with a gay young queen. You will escape your memories here in France and, with my introductions, you are sure to meet a man better-suited to you._

_I cannot simply take off for Navarre._

_You could come as one of Claude’s ladies._

_I doubt she’d have me._

_It was her idea._

 

She’d been suspicious, convinced that Claude wished to have her merely to taunt and torture and not unconvinced that Antoine wouldn’t make overtures again, but Claude actually seemed sincere for once. _It’s no good for my brother for you to continue here at court._

 

It’s no good for her either, being so near and yet so far from a man she still loves but could never forgive. And perhaps leaving for a different court to seek new prospects with the blessing of its king and his new queen is a far better option than continuing unmarried and unprotected in France, serving a queen whose future seems so uncertain. “Why do you want it now?”

 

“I was in the wrong.”

 

“What made you realize it?”

 

\---

 

He is on his way to see his sister – he doesn’t trust Catherine; this is hardly the first poor match she’s attempted to make for Claude – when her betrothed stops him in the corridor.

 

“Ah, Sebastian!”

 

His jaw tightens as he resists the urge to tear the man limb from limb for everything he’s done.

 

“Have you said your goodbyes to Kenna yet?”

 

_Kenna?_

 

His confusion must show on his face because Antoine chuckles. “Oh, you didn’t know? She’s to be one of Claude’s ladies; she leaves for Navarre with us after the wedding. Say your goodbyes, Sebastian,” he commands. “Have a last private moment with the wife you ran off as surely as my beloved brother did his own.”

 

_As surely as my beloved brother did his own._

 

Marcus. Marcus de Bourbon. The man he’d failed to kill, instead leaving him to linger in agony for long after the initial injury.

 

Antoine nods at him with a mocking smile and departs.

 

\---

 

“Catherine told me the truth of your involvement with Antoine and what matter of man he is, but I knew it even before that. It’s just that tonight . . . tonight I went to speak with Claude, but I saw Antoine in the corridor first and he wished to remind me that I’d lost you through my own folly, as though it wasn’t already painful enough to have lost you. But I suppose I can’t begrudge him a triumph I enabled.”

 

Antoine is petty, still. But he will begrudge Bash his brother’s death until his dying day and for that Kenna cannot blame him. Yet it seems unnecessarily petty when he has won and Bash has clearly lost.

 

As petty as she once was. Once, she would have demanded that Bash grovel, get on his hands and knees, weep, kiss her feet, before even entertaining the notion of forgiveness. Now, she asks for something that matters, even if she will never be able to forget some of what happened between them. “In exchange for my forgiveness, I want every secret you’ve ever kept from me.”

 

“Some of them are not mine to –”

 

“I don’t care. I want every last one.” She enunciates precisely so he does not miss a word.

 

He sighs and sits.

 

She reaches for a goblet – she will pour water, not wine, because she doesn’t like Bash when he drinks now – but he shakes his head.

 

“No wine.”

 

“I was going to pour water –”

 

“That will be fine, thank you.”

 

But she wasn’t done. She pours as she continues. “I will never serve you wine again. You say such terrible things to me when you drink.”

_After all, I wouldn’t want to keep a treacherous . . . whore._

 

She shakes her head. It wounds her still.

 

He flinches, unable to look her in the eye as he accepts the goblet from her. “I _am_ sorry. More than I can say.”

 

“Prove it.”

 

He takes a long sip and begins ever-so-slowly. “Narcisse’s hold on Francis? He knew that Francis, not Montgomery, killed our father in that joust. Narcisse also knew that Catherine and Mary had attempted to poison Henry before Francis succeeded in killing him.”

 

Regicide and attempted regicides. It is unfathomable. But she can hardly blame them. Save Mary, all of them – Francis, Catherine, Bash, and Kenna herself – had had their lives endangered by Henry at some point in his madness and even Mary he’d made feel terribly unsafe.

 

“Catherine attempted to poison Claude because she believed Claude killed our younger sisters.” Bash’s words come quickly now, as though to avoid prolonging pain. “In truth, it was my mother, who succeeded in making the nanny believe the twins’ death resulted from her negligence, because she was jealous of Henry’s other lovers, of the fact that, as the twins’ birth demonstrated, he still visited Catherine’s bed.”

 

Henry’s beloved Diane – Bash’s _mother_ – a murderess! In cold blood, not in war or at the command of a king or to save another.

 

“Catherine, by the way, was the one who killed _her_. Speaking of my mother, she was a pagan and, to some degree, I share her faith. I killed a man to save Mary from pagans and another so he would not expose _me_ as a pagan. I killed the men my father ordered to kill me on my way to Spain. Marcus de Bourbon is not the only man I killed on Henry’s orders. And I killed Montgomery so he would not tell the truth about Francis and our father. I attacked Cardinal Perazzo’s lover – an innocent man – with a hot poker to prove a point about innocent men being branded by the Dark Riders. Remember that?” Bash is nearly gasping for air when he is done.

 

It all shocks her. There are so many secrets that she can’t focus on just one. But above all, what shocks her is the fact that Bash has trusted her, a woman who is leaving under the protection of a king who despises him and much of his family, with his and his family’s deepest, darkest secrets.

 

It is not enough, but it is something. It does not soothe the pain in her heart, but it forces her to stop and think.

 

She has many things to consider before she can depart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought that there had to be a reason they had Catherine in the background watching things unfold between Antoine/Kenna and Bash at the party. I thought that there would be some sort of scheme as a result. I might try my hand at that in a different story. Even here, you can’t necessarily take Catherine at face value.


End file.
